GRAVES AND LASERS

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Sunday, February 23, 2014

I finally finished my edition for Obrero Press! This took quite awhile, considering my work schedule, so my time in the shop was relegated to about once or twice a week. I am thrilled with the final prints, and very grateful for the invitation to participate. The theme for the edition was issues of Immigration and minorities combating racism, xenophobia, homophobia and the like. I chose to make a print about crossing queer borders. Here is the statement that goes along with the Approximate Threat portfolio:

Approximate Threat, Intaglio with Colle, and Screenprint

Tiger Reed“Approximate Threat”Intaglio and SilkscreenThe imagery presented in Approximate Threat is a culmination of private irrational fears from my perspective as a Transgendered male. The experience of transitioning from one gender to another is akin to having a map without a key or any recognizable icons. The emotional landscape changes radically, and the social shift can feel insurmountable. The borders are crossed gradually over time, as the physical changes settle in. I “pass” as male in virtually every scenario these days, yet I often find myself waiting to be discovered at the most inopportune moment; as if my masculinity is any less real than any other man’s. Although trans men (female-to-male) face less physical violence than our male-to-female counterparts, it does happen, and these confrontations can vary in intensity depending on the situation. The people I am most wary of in my every day life happen to be Caucasian males. The portraits of the wolves and the man possess a dualistic relationship to my person: they represent my familiar desire to fit into their world and yet they an approximate threat in mine. Each time I enter a new public realm, whether it be a grocery store, barbershop, or gas station, I engage in a visual assessment of my surroundings, in order to determine how safe I am. While in the process of developing the images and printing this edition, I have been forced to confront this fictional aggressor and address my own assumptions about what they may look like. I was compelled to study this image a great deal while working on the etching, and as a result, I began to reconcile my profiling of other human beings. I realized there are no simple answers to moving through this complex identity, that once, when I was female, my assailants embodied this profile. Of course I would carry this history with me in my present life, and be influenced by it. With this admission is the key to a new map, and this new country I am gradually growing into.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The last eight or nine months since I graduated from SIUE have been quite a whirlwind. I interned over the summer with the guys from Firecracker Press (who are awesome, in case you didn't know), taught in the Fall for the first time over at SIUE, and I now have finally had some time to sit down and make some art work. Developing a discipline outside of an academic environment is easier said than done, especially when working in the "real" world. Since things have slowed down a bit, I have been making an effort to work as much as I can to push my creative practice.

I am happy to say that I was juried into a show over at The Jacoby Arts center called Graphic Content. It is a group show, and I am looking forward to seeing the other works that were selected as well. I tried some different things with these pieces, and feel like this is a nice direction to be heading in for my works on paper. The opening is March 1, so stop by!

Saturday, July 30, 2011

City Wide Open Studios was great today, I met some great people and also received a lot of feedback on this summer's works on paper. I wanted to post some older works so that some of the folks I met today can get an idea of what I do....

About Me

Tiger Reed is a Youth Services Provider at the St. Louis Public Library. He currently lives in South St. Louis and is also an artist. Tiger graduated with an MFA in Printmaking from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2012. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2009. Tiger is originally from Miami, Florida.